


Moving to the Country

by valderys



Category: House M.D.
Genre: Alternate Universe, Angst, Community: apocalyptothon, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-01-19
Updated: 2010-01-19
Packaged: 2017-10-06 11:34:20
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,359
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/53248
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/valderys/pseuds/valderys
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Diagnosis isn't always cure.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Moving to the Country

**Author's Note:**

  * For [oh_mumble](https://archiveofourown.org/gifts?recipient=oh_mumble).



> Written in 2006

Movin' to the country, gonna eat a lot of peaches…  
_\- Presidents of the USA_  


The peaches are too sweet. They're almost rotten, almost falling off the branch, pecked by birds, and blown by flies. They're still one of the most delicious things Eric has ever tasted. He glances over at Rob and watches the juice dribble down his chin. Rob licks his lips and Eric knows what they will taste like, all sticky from the fruit, all thin and warm and wind-burned. He knows and his mouth waters.

Instead, he tips his face up to the sun, red behind his closed eyelids and thinks, this, this is California. I've come back to California.

If he looks at the orchard through eyes that are nearly slits, blurred through his eyelashes, it could look tended and preserved. It could be neat and tidy and perfect, the way it ought to be. That's almost good enough. And they have each other, and they'll be on the road again tomorrow. Life is good. Life is…

At least they are alive. He bites into the peach, and the juice is rotten and full of sweetness.

***

_"I'm happy for you," says House, his walking stick twirling dangerously, a grin that might be manic stirring on his face, "I'm so happy for you that I'm going to ignore the reason why you haven't been doing the immunofluorescence, or the PCR, and concentrate on the really important question. Why is there a patient in our lounge?"_

_It's true, there is. Foreman wants to smile and shake his head, the way he might have done a week ago, two weeks ago. But he's too tired now for that. He watches House's eyes. His rictus grin, the way he twitches. Foreman wonders if he asks House for some, whether he'll get the good stuff too. Whether House even knows what the good stuff is anymore. Whether he'll even feel it if he takes some._

_They're past vicodin. They're past everything. Cameron goes around from bed to bed like Florence Nightingale, like a ghost. Like an angel of death._

_Because that's all they are. That's all they bring in their wake. Death and more death. They ran out of beds days ago. They ran out of floor space yesterday. That's why there are patients in the diagnostic department's lounge. House's indignation is wearying, but it makes Foreman smile. He didn't think anything could anymore, so he thanks House for that. He smiles and he shakes his head, like it's a gift, and House hops up onto his stick like some kind of manic goblin. He's on the good stuff and Foreman wants some. But he supposes the reflection of it might do. It always has before._

***

The SUV has rumbled itself into his bones. It's funny. He's never travelled so much before. Never needed to. He's an East Coast boy, through and through, despite his temporary diversion to LA. Brought up in Philly, graduated Johns Hopkins, Weill Cornell, LAMC and then Princeton-Plainsboro. Then the world ended. At least he'll never have to put that on a CV.

He looks over at Rob, who's dozing in the passenger seat, one foot up on the dashboard, his head swaying forward. His hair glints gold in the late afternoon sunshine, and Eric thinks, he'll have to cut it soon. Rob's bangs are hanging way past his eyes. Eric wants to brush it out of his face, he wants to feel the warmth of the blood under Rob's skin. The delicate flesh of his forehead where the pulse beats so close to the surface. He wants to know it's still there.

Eric wonders if he should regret that he's never travelled. That he'll never see Venice, or Prague, or Shanghai now. He wonders if this will be enough to satisfy any latent wanderlust, this endless driving, this endless pushing forward mile by slow passing mile. Of course, he's never seen this either, never done a road trip before, not enough time when he was at college. He was too ambitious, too hard-working. Too aware of the competition. But he likes to think this is what his road trip would have been like, just him and a buddy, driving where the fancy takes them.

Except that's not how it is. Rob's not a buddy, he's never been a buddy, he's closer than that now. And they have a job to do. They're not driving for the fun of it. But Eric likes to pretend, and the daydream passes the time. After all, it's not like he has to pay attention to the traffic.

He drives on.

***

_Cuddy is the first to die._

_Of course, she isn't the first to die in the country, or even in their hospital. People are falling like flies long before that. But she is the first person to die that matters. Is that selfish? Chase smiles and argues that it is inevitable. Cameron says that it is a human response. They aren't to blame. Foreman just wants it to be over before they lose anyone else._

_House was there at the end. Foreman knows this because he went looking for him, to have him sign some report. He'd held her hand. He'd dropped it like the dead meat it had become when Foreman handed him the clipboard. House had signed his name with a flourish, and then waved it in front of Cuddy's dead eyes. He'd grinned at her as though he'd told the most hilarious joke in the world._

_Foreman wonders whether House thinks he's funny. He wonders why he only ever smiles when House is pissed. Watching Cuddy's eyes cloud, he wants House to be angry, for the world to right itself. But, of course, that would be too easy. Instead, Foreman goes back to the diagnostic lounge, stepping over patients as he walks. He's already stopped seeing them as people._

***

In Washington State, it rains. It makes Eric laugh, although he doesn't know what he's laughing at. Can clichés still be clichés when there's no-one left to see them? Has it ever mattered if the fucking tree falls in the forest? There's certainly enough of them as they drive north, conifers showing their pointed tops to the grey sky. Eric curses and puts the wipers on full until he can see them again, tall and majestic and untouched. He leans forward, staring out into the streaked and muddy road. He nearly misses a pothole and swerves violently to avoid it. He only realises that it's no pothole after he steers around the slowly flapping rain slicker. He doesn't look at what it covers. They've both learned not to speculate.

Rob stares at him as he curses but he doesn't say anything. They don't talk much. There's not much Eric wants to say, but then he's always been a man of few words. He used to think of himself as a man of action. He doesn't know what Rob thinks.

Later, on sheets that smell of mildew, in some broken down motel, he pushes into Rob just to hear him groan. His hands are too hard on Rob's hips, his skin hot and slick. He'll have bruises tomorrow, Eric thinks, distracted and divorced, even as his body tightens and spills in the cool dark. He knows Rob won't say anything about that either, maybe even welcomes them. Eric doesn't know. He doesn't know much anymore. Just the endless driving, and now the rain.

***

_"What's the point?" Chase asks, one day. "They don't need a diagnosis. We know what it is. So what can we tell them? 'You're dying. Get over it.' See, that wasn't hard."_

_Cameron looks at him with pity shining out of her big brown eyes. She's almost luminescent with tiredness, with caring so very much. House rolls his eyes and taps his cane against the whiteboard, wiped as clean as snow, as innocence. Like innocence would save anyone._

_Cameron's in her element. She loves ministering to the poor, frightened, huddled masses. She takes their temperatures, and wipes their brows. Foreman wonders sometimes why she became doctor, with all its attendant difficulty and competition. He thinks she would have been just as happy as a nurse, ministering, rather than healing. She doesn't really want them well again anyway. They're not as interesting when they're not suffering. Then he smiles at her, because he's annoyed again, and that burn of anger is just about better than anything else at getting him through this._

_Cameron loves it, although she'll never admit it. She can care, and care again, and watch them all fade to nothing as she gently holds their hands._

_Foreman stops being mad on the day she starts to cough. He can't be angry with the fear that replaces the pity in her eyes._

***

They find a bar in a two-bit town somewhere in Wyoming. Eric wonders why they're even bothering. There's no-one left alive here. Each town so far has been deserted, and they can't check every ranch, every isolated homestead. It's too much.

The sun beats down out of a cloudless sky, and although they've seen thunderheads building up in the afternoons, it's blue like infinity this morning, with the wind sharp over the plains, and the grass burnt golden and dry in rolling acres. Eric stops the SUV in Hicksville, and gets out, leaving the door swinging. Rob looks at him in surprise.

He walks into the only bar, and it's low and dark. There's a tang of old smoke, and older beer. The rotten smell he was half-braced for doesn't manifest, and Eric likes that. This is a good place to be. It's the right size, not eternity laid out in rolling hills and endless sky. He can't take eternity right now, if he ever could. He walks behind the bar and pours himself a brandy, because it doesn't need ice. The bottle is dusty and not much touched, which seems about right for this dump.

He hears the shuffle of feet and tosses a bottle of gin towards where he knows Rob's just walked in. There's no smashing sound of glass, so Eric figures he catches it. Instead there's a sharp inhalation, and Eric grins. He looks up, and catches an odd look of pain in Rob's eyes, weird, because he's not looking at Eric, but at the bottle itself.

It's funny how things catch them like that. Eric's just the same. The world may be dead and gone, but it hasn't stopped anything hurting.

***

_"They've cancelled my soaps," says House, with outrage, as though that's what really matters. "They're showing re-runs. Jackie's baby was the shortest three trimester pregnancy in the history of obstetrics. Maybe this time it'll be the longest."_

_Wilson raises an eyebrow as House leans forward, hunched over his handheld-tv, before he starts coughing again, harsh and thick. House hunches over some more, not looking up, his fingers twitching as he strains to see the tiny screen. Wilson waves his hands for some water, for something, anything, and Foreman takes more pity on him than House. He hands him a beaker. It doesn't seem to help, but eventually Wilson stops coughing, his face sweaty and pale, his chest heaving. House still doesn't look, but he doesn't move away either, and one of Wilson's waving hands ends up resting on House's shoulder._

_Wilson is lying on a couch they've manhandled into House's office. They can't get him a bed, but they can oust usurpers from the office. They hand off in shifts. Guarding the door. Keeping it locked. Privacy. It's the only gift they have._

_Foreman stands over House, impatient. It's his turn to watch Wilson. House knows that but he's watching TV as though it's the most important thing in the world. Foreman opens his mouth to point out the stupidity of that, to let out a little anger, it's ok, he can spare some. But instead he watches Wilson's fingers creep slowly along to the nape of House's neck. Wilson's eyes are closed, and Foreman wonders if he's forgotten that he's even there._

_Foreman closes his mouth, and takes a seat by the desk instead, picking up House's hacky-sack. He tosses it from hand to hand, and stops looking himself. Foreman might be sorry for them both, but he's not suicidal. Some things it's better not to see._

***

Nebraska is hot. The sky is still cloudless, with not even a hint of a tornado to enliven the afternoon. Eric would like a tornado, he decides, since he's never seen one. The power of nature all wrapped up in a messy, dramatic package he can at least _see_. He drowses as Rob drives, listening to some classic rock compilation Rob's scrounged up from somewhere. White man's music Eric wants to say, but that's as much of a cliché as Rob playing it, so he doesn't. He actually quite likes the raucous cheerful anarchy of the music filling up the silence, but thinks he doesn't much like Nebraska – it's too much like Wyoming, which will be too much like Arkansas, he reckons.

Then something he's nearly forgotten rises out of the slight haze. A jagged, rough-edged outline, like a sleeping monster. The grey skyscrapers look like notched teeth in the haze, but the sign that rattles past their window declares it to be Omaha. Eric glances at Rob, ill at ease and unsure. They've avoided big cities. Too full of disease, too full of death. Plenty to loot, but no need as yet. Not until at least one cleansing winter has come and gone.

Rob looks determined, his lip stuck out in a childish almost-pout. Eric wants to bite it – like Rob's rebellion is a challenge he's been waiting for; but he can show restraint. This isn't some motel, after dark, fucking to know they're alive. This is their work. This is more important than that. Eric sits up straight and pulls the map over to himself, and Rob looks sulky. They're passing into the outskirts now – white wooden suburbs, porches and water butts, and 2.4 dead kids… Eric shivers. He doesn't want to be here.

He's about to tell Rob to turn around, to get them out of there, when they see movement. A man in a plaid shirt, with a gun, silhouetted against the sky. It's been so long since they've seen someone – back in Oregon? Idaho? – that Eric swallows, his throat suddenly dry. And he's grateful, for this next chance, for this new redemption.

And he's grateful too that the gun isn't pointed at them. Not this time anyway. That's an improvement.

***

_"Go on, I want_ ** someone** _ to mock the dying man," says House, brightly, tossing back another handful of pills. "And you're all I've got."_

_House doesn't look ill, and Foreman wonders if that's because he's always been in pain. Always running on the febrile energy of the drugged. He exchanges a glance with Chase, before they go back to the labs. They're both well. Disgustingly so, given the corpses that litter Princeton Plainsboro like discarded dolls. They're bloating, and soon they'll start to stink. There's still enough fuel for the emergency generators and Foreman has turned down the air-con as low as it will go, but that won't last long. Their breath blooms white now, as they move around the corridors. They don't look at the floor._

_House wants to work. He wants to but he can't. He's already collapsed once, falling almost in slow-motion from his stool, the microscope shattering on the floor. Foreman and Chase carried him to the office. Carried because the elevators aren't trustworthy, and there are too many… obstructions for a wheelchair. House lies on the couch, where Wilson coughed and rattled his way to silence. Foreman thinks House likes that, thinks that it's fitting, in some weird kind of a way, but you can't really tell. It is House, after all._

_They work instead. They work for him and they work because of him. The work is all that matters, and it's good that they have something to think about, other than the end of the world. He used to page them for progress reports until the pagers stopped working. Foreman supposes that's going to be true of everything soon. He can't get his head round what that'll be like. He refuses to think about his parents, and what it was like for them at the end. Mom, at least, would have noticed nothing, but it's not a comfort._

_Foreman looks over at Chase, bent over his own equipment. The artificial light washes out any colour in his face. He looks like a ghost. There's a clenching sensation in Foreman's stomach until he takes three heavy steps to Chase's side and grabs his wrist. Chase stares at him but doesn't move away. His pulse beats steadily under Foreman's thumb, thin flesh warm and smooth over delicate bone. He doesn't look sick. He doesn't start to cough._

_Foreman doesn't know what he'd do, if Chase ever does._

***

Eric laughs. He takes the hand that's held out to him and he twirls the woman, her arms sinewy and tanned, her face a warm flash of smiling teeth and swirling hair. He dosey-do's and thinks, white man's music, yet again. It's so strange. He doubts he'd have danced like this with any of them. Before. He doubts they'd have even given him the chance.

It's not enough, but it's something. Certainly something. Like the smell of her exertion, strong and sharp. So very alive. Like the creaky fiddle that's being played, as feet stomp and couples grasp each other, like something right out of 'Oklahoma', something as clichéd as that. But there's so _many_ of them, he sees a new face every time he turns, and he can't help but laugh at that, can't help it at all.

Rob is laughing too, and talking like he can't stop. Eric can see him if he looks, catch him in glimpses as he spins past; and Rob's eating as well, which Eric is glad to see. He scarcely picks at his food on the road. There's something to celebrate here, finally, and everyone's making the most of it. Trestle tables are loaded down with pies, and franks and beans, and peaches still in the can. This new community has the riches of Omaha to pick over; he doesn't feel bad about taking their bounty. And the two of them have something to offer in return, after all.

In the morning, Eric will get them to line up. All twenty four of them, including the children – and these are the first children they've found to have survived, three of them, no less – of course, he feels like dancing! He'll get them to line up by the SUV, and Rob will break out new needles from their sterile packaging, the clear plastic crackling in his fingers. And then they will do their job, do what they worked for; until the fuel for the generator ran out, until the rats ran down the corridors, until House coughed out his last instruction, and died.

Secondary waves of infection. Mutated, and inevitable, and just as deadly. Able to be prevented by vaccination, if anyone could use the current strains to develop them. House diagnosed the first wave, it wasn't even difficult, but diagnosis isn't cure. And then there was no one left to care.

They take blood samples as they go, and they keep working. They're going to beat this. They're going to make a difference. They're on a road trip racing ahead of the wind. It's not going to defeat them.

But for tonight, Foreman will laugh. He'll watch everyone have fun, and he'll dance again, and he'll make Rob eat something more, and stare at the juice from the fruit all sticky and shining on Rob's lips. God helps those who help themselves, his father used to say. Eric doesn't believe in God, but he believes in the work. He believes in Rob, and the pulse beating beneath his fingertips, when he leads him from the party.

He believes in the taste of peaches.


End file.
